Re John’s comment about not being bothered by tourists in SF, unfortunately we’re retired, so we are visiting the same areas outside The City that tourists are! Namely, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Monterey counties. We normally do not travel in the summer due to high temps in the Wine Country as well as endless lines of tour buses, but we’ll see how it goes. We usually go on driving trips in a regular route through the above-mentioned counties. I’m an excellent cook, but I’ve been doing it for 57 yrs. Going out is my hobby, and I’m anxious to support the many excellent restaurants that have suffered under the lockdown. I fear that a large number of them will never reopen. Predictions are for 30% of restaurants nationally to shut down for good. I think that number will be higher in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are too many seat-of-the-pants eateries financed by personal credit cards and savings; they will not be able to recover from the limited reopening guidelines that will come out to prevent that dreaded “second wave”. We have some remodeling projects that our contractor will fit in as she can. We will also probably refinance the house to get some larger projects done, such as foundation work and repaving. All of these, unfortunately, are things we need to do, not that we want to do, LOL! FYI, the only hard part about making sushi is having the rice vinegar in your pantry and already owning the plastic molds. Prepping the fillings takes the most time, but once you've got that done you can turn out dozens in an hour. Now if you're talking sashimi, that's a different story. Easy if you have access to a good quality fish market or vendor, who can get you the frozen sushi-grade ahi, salmon, seabass, etc. It will always be frozen or frozen/defrosted, due to the danger of parasitic infection: "....All living organisms, including fish, can have parasites...the fish must be frozen to an internal temperature of -4°F for at least 7 days to kill any parasites that may be present. Home freezers are usually between 0°F and 10°F and are not be cold enough to kill the parasites." (from www.seafoodhealthfacts.org) BTW, sushi-grade fish, whether farmed or wild-caught, is extremely expensive retail. You won't save any money over going to a restaurant, although you'll have a lot more sashimi to enjoy! Best pieces have already been trimmed of skin and any white tendons or silverskin. Use a sharp knife (NOT serrated, preferably) and slice thick or thin, as you prefer.

Yup, I hit this problem in July when my 15 year old Maytag washer died. There’s a huge backlog and the supply chain of appliances and replacement parts is dry (no pun intended). while I ended up replacing the $260 transmission in mine to get it back into service, I later found that the small mom & pop appliance dealers had better inventory in my area...Reno‘s Appliance here in NJ had Speed Queen TC5000 toploaders at $929 and $30 delivery. Same for big online sellers such as appliancesconnection.com You might get better results by shopping the small appliance stores in your area. If not, appliancesconnection.com shows the Speed Queen LWN432 commercial old school machine (no water level setting, and warranty is parts only, nice clicky timer) in stock for $829 and free shipping.

I wanted to let you know about an engineered wood floor that I had installed recently. It’s from Floor & Decor - not sure if experts will have negative comments about this store - but they might). I had a unique situation where I HAD to to remove ALL of the carpet in my house ASAP due to serious health issues (systemic mastocytosis - one issue is that I have allergic reactions - some milder but some severe requiring many trips to ER due to anaphylactic shock). I had to install an air purification system throughout my home also (pretty big expense) so my budget for floors was very tight. The exact color of flooring I purchased had been discontinued (regionally) by me - but were about $6-7/sq ft on both the East and West coasts (I had to pay for shipping - expensive - but if you knew the price I paid, even with the expensive shipping for about 35 boxes at 70lbs each - it appears to have been an EXTREMELY good deal based upon what I’ve read on this site). The floors are Woodland Reserve (I believe it’s an in-house brand) and range between about $5-$9 sq ft. They no longer have mine, but still have other colors of the same type - and they also have others with varying widths/colors/finishes. My floors are European Oak with reactive stain - 5/8th inch/4 mm wear/9” planks. They have a matte waterborne uv cured finish. I had to be particular re: materials and finish also due to my health issues. The lengths vary from about 25” to just under 87”. Obviously, because of the width (probably a bit wider than I would have picked out - I would have preferred about 6-7” - but everyone LOVES them) they were glued and nailed during installation. They can be refinished two times (maybe 3 - but my flooring installer said 2 for sure) which is good also - I am getting ready to have the rest of my hardwood floors refinished in order to compliment the new engineered ones. My floors were installed over the weekend before Christmas - so, I haven’t had them for very long - but I had MANY people here for the holidays - including my daughter and son-in-law with their two English bulldogs (one an 8 week old puppy). I also have two dogs - a yorkie poo and a morkie (mutts!). The weather here has included snow that has melted completely twice. The floors have held up well to muddy paws - plus, if you‘ve ever been around an English Bulldog for very long, you know how much they drool! Anyway - I am rambling now (I’ve been up all night - it’s currently about 5 a.m.). I just read your question and wanted to give you my thoughts because I had to make my purchase without even a sample (and incurred about $450 in non refundable shipping charges). If you have any questions, let me know. I tried to post some examples of the flooring but it didn’t post for some reason. I hope that it doesn’t post this LONG comment twice.

With all due respect to the current situation going on, It is mind boggling that anyone would order from AJ Madison given the hundreds of negative reviews that company has. They have had delivery issues pre-covid and a HUGE history of lying to their customers. I would never think of ordering from them.